A (Short) Story

A long time ago, I had a meeting with my boss and the chief architect of the project we were working on.I was the project manager, and the subject of the meeting was how to finalize some decisions that had been up in the air for a while (too long, in my opinion, of course).

The meeting did not go well.I was furious with my colleague and showed it (and said it).Decisions weren’t made.The architect stormed out.

As I got up to leave, my boss said: “I knew you were going to do that.I could tell, the moment you sat down”.

At the time, I was shocked.What had he seen? Was I that obvious? I thought I had gone into the meeting with the simple notion that we should make some decisions quickly. Apparently, things were a bit more complicated.

Despite having been around for twenty-five years, these findings continue to be presented as something surprising, something that doesn’t quite match the model of how organizations actually work.Which would imply that either a) the research findings are inaccurate or b) our models are faulty.I’m going to suggest b: we need better models.